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Tankless water heater. Who has one?


JL Sargent

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I looked into these a while back. The electric ones are not as good as the gas ones, and the energy savings were not very compelling to justify the extra cost and drawbacks. Gas is a better unit if you can go that way. If I could install in a new construction a small unit (for electric) at each place needing a hot tap, I might consider it.

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I had a small tankless in our MB in our first home and I had hot water in a matter of seconds! Before we installed it it would take several minutes to get hot water to the MB as it was the last leg in the house. I have never heard of it taking longer to get hot water with a tankless vs a standard water heater. In our 2nd house we had a recirculating hot water setup installed and it was always hot when you wanted hot water.

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I installed a tankless unit in my new house about 3 years ago now. I'm on propane and didn't want to keep a tank hot all day when i'm not using hot water. It has worked out quite well IMHO.But beware a tankless unit uses your pipes as a small tank, so you can think you have hot water and get in the shower and then the water gets cold again briefly. Google "cold water sandwich". Also check out a "On Demand" hot water circulating pump like the "ChiliPepper Appliance".

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We had one of these in Berlin back in the 70's. It was a gas model. They are a great device to have. They are expensive to buy. But, you save a lot on gas by not keeping a 40-60-80 or larger tank of water constantly hot. We never ran out of hot water.

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I have installed many of these units over the years in homes that I've built and how well they work has to do with a few things, first I will say that I don't have much use for the electric ones based on the initial investment and payback time vs. purchasing a super insulated water heater but with gas I think it's something to consider and how happy you are with the installation has to do with the initial sizing and placement of the unit based on what your expectations are. If a unit isn't properly sized for the normal demand of the home and occupants you won't be happy because you'll run out of hot water, just like any undersized water heater, so proper planning is the key along with placement in relation to all of the hot water supplies but it doesn't take longer to get hot water or not anything that will be noticed by the minimal time to trigger the unit on.

If you have a situation where you have extremely long runs and this applies to any hot water supply, you can look at installing additional loops in the system or installing a quick circulation pump in line at the fixture that will pump the water back into your water system until it senses hot water. I will tell you that regardless of the unit you're installing, if you don't have conditioned water you're asking for problems (also applies to any other water heater or plumbing fixture) as these units will clog up with mineral deposits quickly so make sure your water source is sound first.

Hope this helps.

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I will tell you that regardless of the unit you're installing, if you don't have conditioned water you're asking for problems (also applies to any other water heater or plumbing fixture) as these units will clog up with mineral deposits quickly so make sure your water source is sound first.

Hope this helps.

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Just got this thing installed. 7 wires running to it. It's a Marey ECO240. It has 3 40amp 240v double pole circuit breakers feeding it + a ground. So that is a total of 7 incoming elec. connections at the bottom of this thing. Got it plumbed and then wired. I then turned it on and eureka, hot water. We'll see how dad likes it.

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